May slips away from cable TV

Audiences tune out top networks

For cable TV, May proved to be the cruelest month, at least in the Nielsen ratings: Nine of the top-10 ad-supported networks declined in number of total viewers, five by double digits.

“The programming for May on both broadcast and cable was boring,” said Tim Brooks, exec VP of research for Lifetime. “There were no huge series finales on the broadcast networks — the last episode of ‘King of Queens’ is not exactly comparable to the conclusion of ‘Seinfeld.'”

Brooks’ analysis of the data shows that the seven broadcast nets plunged by 7% in household ratings for May, and cable as a category dropped by 3%.

“I think if the cable networks realized how soft broadcast would be in May, they would’ve scheduled more original movies and more original episodes of series,” Brooks said.

The most prominent cable networks certainly got whacked. Although TNT finished first among cablers for May, it was down 15% from May ’06, hurt by weak viewership of many NBA playoff games. The teams that keep advancing are from smaller markets like San Antonio, Utah and Cleveland; the Los Angeles Lakers got eliminated in the first round by Phoenix, and the New York Knicks failed to make the playoffs.

Sluggish NBA ratings also helped damage the performance of ESPN, the third highest-rated net, which suffered a worse dropoff in total viewers from May to May — 29% — than any of the 67 other cablers whose audiences get measured by Nielsen.

Second-place USA was down 4% in primetime, and fourth-place TBS dipped 5%. The Disney Channel, which is not traditionally counted with the others because it’s commercial-free, finished between USA and ESPN, rising 2%. Fifth-place Fox News was the only top-10 ad-supported network that didn’t decline, winding up flat at 1.3 million average primetime viewers.

The 18 highest-rated individual programs in May were either the Monday-night World Wrestling Entertainment free-for-alls on USA or NBA Playoff games (nine on TNT, one on ESPN). The only movie to crack the top 50 among ad-supported networks was “Sweet Home Alabama,” which drew 3.6 million viewers on May 19 and another 3.5 million on May 20.